PCB Contest

Cardboard Challenge

Safe and Secure Challenge

4 Discussions

Great project along with very comprehensive and easy-to-follow videos. In trying to duplicate your efforts, I wondered and then realized why you used Photoshop for the original drawing. If you draw the lines in Illustrator, you have to overlap the frame so that the endpoints of the lines don't show. By doing that, you create cuts that will negatively impact the look of the frame. I figured out an alternative way to do this all in Illustrator: create an outer rectangle (filled black, ~30 pt black stroke) and an inner rectangle (filled white, no stroke) within it to create the frame; draw the criss-crossing lines (~30 pt black stroke) overlapping with the frame (across the inner rectangle but not beyond the outer one); select all; Object-->Expand...-->OK; Pathfinder-->Merge; then set the stroke for everything to 0.1 or whatever your laser cutter requires for vector cuts. At least that worked for me in Adobe Illustrator CS6. Hope it's helpful!

This is really pretty, maybe I'll try my hand at designing one! Also, there is an option to just upload a video Instructable if you feel that makes more sense to showcase your project. I'm glad you included pictures in this case, since I think it really shows the lantern off well! :)